A Land With Magic
by a red burn
Summary: And that's how they lived through life, one aching step after the other. Post finale The Charmings reunion.


**Title:** a land with magic  
**Summary**: And that's how they lived through life, one aching step after the other. Post finale The Charmings reunion.  
**Notes**: The Charmings family reunion feels while I wait anxiously for the real thing in season 2. Can you just _imagine_ the four of them bunking in Snow's place?

My intention was to write this from Charming's pov to discovering his daughter, but Snow White took control. As much as I love the Charmings equally, I have a soft spot for Emma/Snow.

Overall I'm not really sure what this is.

I dedicate this piece to Sherrie and Serena, my lovelies Once partners in crime.

-x-

She felt the magic suffocating her; heavy and thick squeezing her lungs shut, pouring over her skin and seeping into her cells. She felt it pulsating, breathing, a rhythmic humming in her ears, as alive as the frantic beating of her heart. She knew that feeling, recognized the power. She feared it.

When the wave came she expected it to be like the apocalyptic thunderstorm, to be overwhelmed by an avalanche and wake up lost and alone and unaware; she never expected it to be painless, to be quick, to simply wash over her like the morning sun in a summer day. The arms wrapped around her body like a glove worn and familiar were still tight. She recognized the length of his forearms, the bulging of his muscles under her fingertips, the way the palm of his hands cradled the back of her head.

The last time it had been she who cradled him: his broken body against her, to let his still warm blood seep scarlet into her clothes, to beg and pray she'd still have a chance to be with him. To give up when magic consumed her and the world around her came undone, millions of particles coming apart, molecules rearranging and recreating, her memories wiped clean as she hoped Regina one day would find the peace her heart craved and her soul needed.

This time she stood firm, her feet planted on the ground, her fingers curled around the front of her lover's jacket, the smell of his blood carved into her being as if her pain was still new and raw like yesterday's battle. She pulled away when his hands faltered and his arms loosened around her body as the cocoon of protection came undone. The sky was dark, grey clouds of winter above her head and fallen dead leaves still crunched underfoot. Nothing seemed to have changed, but there was a different rhythm dancing around her ears.

Charming stepped back and looked around, taking the town in, letting regrets settle in the corners of his mind as the hand inside his squeezed tight and let him know that it was all right. He was all right. They were all right. _It was not_, he wanted to say back, but his memories slowed down to the sharp edges of a sword cutting him deep and his body fighting against the pain and anger and sadness because he had one more mission to finish before he was allowed to let go.

Magic had been their doom, but it was also going to be their salvation.

He had closed his eyes to an empty wardrobe and heart of fresh hopes and opened them to a town full of lost moments and bitter goodbyes.

_Emma._ The word echoed inside his head until it slipped out between his lips. The single word spoken with reverence and pain; memories of desperate cries and a whimpering newborn and tears that burned his skin on the way down blurred together into one aching moment.

Snow's eyes widened with the realization; like a pin dropping in a silent room her thoughts shifted in one fluid motion to a hospital ward and a baby blanket quilted so long ago. Purple had always been her favorite color.

When her eyes met her husband's, understanding passed between them; a lifetime of truths and promises and fears in a year before the short time they had to spend together was brutally interrupted when her child was taken out of her arms.

She moved away from him, urgency weighting heavily on her chest where her newborn had once been for only a few moments two lives before. Charming's hands were holding hers tight, his big palm enveloping tiny fingers that had touched every part of his body so many times before. She pulled at him as the hum around her head replaced by remembrance and the confusion of two lives mixing together inside her head clearing the path to images of a dying child she felt as close to as if he was her own and the blond curls of a woman with a few hundred heartbreaks and a lifetime of deceptions.

Hand in hand, Snow White and Prince Charming made their way to the town's hospital faster than they had ever done anything in their past lives.

-x-

Like a dramatic slow motion scene, she searched among the commotion in the hospital; white floors and white walls and memories returned that had once been wiped clean, as white as void as an sterile room. Then she spots it: blonde mane and red jacket and the crease between her brows furrowed in confusion and for a split second she saw a mirror image of Charming. The breath that'd been caught in her throat and lungs emptied with the force of a sucker punch and for a moment her feet found themselves glued to the ground, her heart filling with pain and love in quick succession.

Then she was moving, making her way through the people and whispers of _your majesty_, and _magic_, and _what happens now_, and found herself throwing strong arms and gloved hands around a woman who came from her womb, who should have been small enough to fit against her breasts and be lulled to sleep. Instead she felt her stiffen, the muscles in her back come taut with tension and the smell of leather and spicy perfume reminded her of scars that could never be undone, hidden just beneath the surface as Emma's walls were broken down one brick at a time.

She pulled away and looked into the same green eyes that had become as familiar as breathing in the year of her marriage. How had she never noticed? Even when her memories were gone and replaced with the ones of a woman that had been too weak and afraid to fight back, those eyes should have meant something. Maybe they had. Maybe she had recognized them on a deep familiar form, hidden by confusion and disbelief and answers to questions she had yet to ask.

"Emma," she whispered in a pained voice and didn't dare to say anything else because she had realized long ago how much one could lose without saying a word.

Her daughter stood there, frozen and broken, a look of anguish, sadness and regrets dancing across her eyes. Eventually her arms wrapped around the shoulders of a woman who was barely old enough to be anyone's mother, but her smell and her touch were soothing and gentle and strong and Emma tried to blame the way her heart leapt on the months of bonding over hot cocoas and expensive scotch and silent company when the pain was too much and tears lulled them to sleep.

Her _best friend_. That was why her cells came into alert, the fundamental recognition of someone you loved. Not because there was a connection between them that went beyond anything the universe could comprehend. Even now she tried to ignore the truth that held her like something precious that was lost so long ago and had only now been found. Pain had been her constant. Loneliness. The need for people who had never loved her and still left. That was familiar. That was safe.

Not this.

Not family, not love, not home. And yet it _was_. She forced back the tears that did not come. And she held on.

She felt the presence, poignant and fractured and when she looked at him she wondered briefly why her soul hadn't recognized him as part of herself. She had spent her life looking for answers, wondering what it would be like to feel the look of her parents upon her, to discover a fantastic truth about her birth, to be told her parents loved her and had never meant to abandon her. How they were sorry, _so sorry_ to give up their baby girl and how they wanted her back to love and cherish. To know she hadn't always been unwanted. That she wouldn't always be lost inside every cracked piece of her soul.

He stood there paralyzed, watching the scene unfold as the woman that had once been carried in his arms crumble inside the embrace of her mother. He remembered the soft feel of woven fabric against his fingertips and tears that fell but never stained; the name she chose so delicately embroidered on a blanket he had hoped would remind his daughter of who she was.

He didn't know much of her, except that she was strong and hardened, fought for the right things and straightened the wrongs no matter the price. As he watched the scarred woman become so small and young he felt jealousy fill his lungs. He knew nothing of her except that his daughter he grown to be like her mother, that they had become best friends without ever realizing they were flesh from flesh, that the same blood ran through their veins and the same strength resided in their cores.

The lanky shirtless little boy looked in awe and Charming remembered a joke about swords made once upon a time when things were simpler and harder; when memories were still trying to grow roots inside his mind and he wondered for the briefest of moments if he'd always arrive a little too late.

Then it hit him, in some fundamental, unconscious level that the pale boy that had died and survived was his as well. Bright teeth and fading freckles and scars that were prevented almost too late. Sword fights that could have been taught and stories that could have been told, birthdays and Christmases and goodnight kisses that could never be given.

Charming took a step forward, almost too afraid to break the momentary spell of reunion, to crack the cocoon of happiness and forgotten tears. When Snow finally released her daughter, Emma's focus shifted to him and he felt the ever present hum of a soul recognizing another; memories of David and James blending together, twirling in a turmoil of emotions. His _daughter_. The baby he had loved more than life and forced to give up. Happiness and sadness threatening to suck him in and before he could process the proper response his arms had enveloped her in an embrace that was long overdue. He felt her flinch, recoiled inside herself, away from the strangeness, the bittersweet truth, the reality she had tried to avoid and deny before he felt herself relax and her own arms came around him. He held on, firm and gentle he held on to something that was no longer his in the hopes that one day it would be again.

They felt small arms around their waist, a boy that was barely old enough to know the world could be evil, to understand what pain meant. He held tight, closing his eyes against the tears and a smile that was bigger than his face.

And they realized that, no matter how much time passed, who came or who went, who stayed and who didn't, what was yours would always find a way back to you somehow.

This was a pulsing love, a first love. Real enough and strong enough, that held them together when everything else seemed to fall apart. They were still moving around the fragile pieces, the leftovers of desperate moments and empty promises whispered in secrets. The last breath of a mother and the last tears of a crying father. They may not have the hours of a hundred years or be able to get back the lost minutes of three decades, but they had now and with time they would learn there would be more than enough time left to say all the missed things, all the wasted words and all the moments left behind.

Evil didn't fight fair. But good did.

And good always won.


End file.
